Study On The Legal Issues Of Docking Pilotage

With the development of the shipping industry,pilotage has been an indispensable shipping service in shipping business.Pilotage service plays an important role whether in the aspect of safeguarding state sovereignty or in the aspect of guaranteeing navigation safety.And the docking pilotage in this article actually is a piloting service which is derived from the pilotage and applies to the water area of dockyard.However,the stipulation of pilotage in current domestic legislation is in more detail,hardly does the docking pilotage.It is easy to brought disputes in practice in the course of docking pilotage because it is hard to find direct legal basis to solve it once accident was happened or disputes were raised.Therefore,the purpose of this article is providing some legislative proposal for completing relevant domestic legislation of docking pilotage in future via discussion and analysis of legal issues such as status and rationality of legislation model,legal status and law adjustment of docking pilotage.Firstly,through the analogy analysis with pilotage,this article summarizes the relation and distinction between them,in order to highlight the particularity of the docking pilotage.And then,the study on the relevant legal issues of docking pilotage in this article is mainly from two aspects.The nature is one aspect.In the basis of the nature of the docking pilotage,discussing a series of issues that if docking pilotage apply to the law of pilotage,if there is compulsory pilotage in docking pilotage,and if docking pilotage should be adjusted by common law.The liability issues of damage is the other.Via connection with the legal status of docking pilot,analyzing whether the shipowner or the dockyard shall be liable for the damage caused by the fault of docking pilot.In the end,the article reaches the conclusion and put into some relevant legislative proposal for the domestic legislation of docking pilotage in future:Firstly,docking pilotage should not apply to the law of pilotage;Secondly,there is compulsory pilotage in docking pilotage in practice and it is proper although the current legal provisions is not clear;Thirdly,there should be some public law in relation to the docking pilotage in the basis of the docking pilotage is only adjusted by private law such as Contract Law currently;Lastly,docking pilot is the employee of the shipowner in piloting,therefore,the shipowner shall be liable for the damage in alternative which was caused by the docking pilot because of his own fault.